Author: drewandgab

Suddenly we’ve hit the tropics – and some warm weather!!

We had a wonderful day at Rollingstone Beach (55km north of Townsville). The caravan park was situated on a long palm lined beach, with a beautiful outlook. It had a great pool and a BMX track for the kids.

 

From Rollingstone, it was an easy drive today to Cairns. Our only stop was to stretch our legs at Cardwell. This is a pretty little town, on the coast, overlooking Hinchinbrook Island. It has a great historical postal museum at the information centre.

 

 

We are now at Cairns, staying at Coconut Resort. It is the most amazing “caravan park” we have ever stayed at…incredible service, beautifully manicured grounds, fantastic facilities for the kids – including 2 huge resort pools. playgrounds, jumping pillows, water park, mini golf, a games centre, nightly big-screen movies and more.

And best of all – it’s warm and tropical!!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We have travelled 1000km north in the last 2 days – from 1770 to Rollingstone Beach, just north of Townsville.

The car and van went well. The kids did ok too – most of the time!! They loved these funny road signs..

 

We stopped for a short overnight stay at a nice little beach side caravan park in a place called Clairview. It was handy as we could just drive in and park the van without having to unhitch, making it easy for an early start the next day.

I am loving the convenience of the van. Great that we can easily pull up for a quick overnight stay and that we can just stop anywhere and get into the van to make lunches or get drinks etc.

 

We arrived yesterday afternoon to Rollingstone Big 4 Caravan Park, which is on a beach that reminds me of Bali. It’s amazing how warm it is now too that we are that much further north – yay!

It’s lovely, so we are going to just going to hang here today.  The kids can have a swim and a run and a break from sitting in the car while we decide where to next.

It’s hard to believe, as we settle into the first week of of our Aussie adventure, that this day, 20 years ago, Drew and I headed off on our trip around the world.

What started off as a dream to travel around South East Asia for 6 months, turned into a seven year adventure that took us from the heights of the Himalayas to the depths of the ocean, and included managing a lodge in the middle of the African bush for 3 years.

I am in the process of updating a page on our website about that trip. If you are interested, have a look on this link.

We have had a wonderful 4 days at 1770 – sunsets, surfing and bushwalks – just what the doctor ordered!! Our time here has given us a chance to catch our breath after a hectic few weeks of moving house, packing and end of term. And time to start getting settled into life in the van.

 

 

After leaving home on Thursday, we spent our first night with friend in Elliott Heads – a welcome stop after a late start and a long drive!! We thought we would have an easy 2-hour drive to 1770 the next day, but hit a bit of a hurdle as soon as we started driving. The brakes on the caravan were heating up and by the time we reached Bundaberg – not even 20 minutes down the road – we realised we had more than a little problem. At one point, we thought we would not be going any further till after the weekend. Luckily though, after stopping at one very unhelpful caravan service place we found a great place with excellent service. They diagnosed the problem to be the electric brake controller in our car and promptly fixed it and we were on our way again. We made the rest of the journey without a problem, so fingers crossed that was the issue.

 

 

Anyway, we made it to 1770 just in time to catch the most glorious sunset and have spent every afternoon since then doing the same. Our days have been very chilled. The kids have been making the most of school holiday time, playing handball and touch football with other kids in the caravan park – and even met up with some friends from school. We’ve been to the beach at Agnes Water every day to surf and have enjoyed the local bush walking.

 

 

 

We have also been pottering around the van and car – even after a few days, things are starting to find their home. We are also starting to realise there are some things we didn’t need to bring and some things we need to buy. I guess over the next few weeks it will all settle into place.

We could easily have spent another few days here, but it’s holiday time and they have someone coming in on our site tomorrow. We were lucky to jag this great site on a cancellation just last week. But we love it here, and will definitely be back!

Tomorrow we continue the trek north..

Yes, we are on the road!! And for anyone who has anything to do with the lead up, this might seem like a minor miracle.

 

Many know only too well, but for those of you who don’t, we are those people who always leave things till the very end…Still packing at midnight when our international flight departs first thing in the morning…still having sunset drinks on the beach when we are due to fly home in a few hours time (and we haven’t yet started packing up our hotel room)…wrapping presents at midnight on Christmas Eve after drinking with family and neighbours all afternoon.

Now, we have known since September that we were going on this trip and that we were going to rent out the house while we were gone. At Christmastime, after my brother and sister-in-law left on their trip they gave us the great advice “Start early!!”.

Well, I did suggest to Drew a few times that we should start finding out about pool certification and get onto some of the maintenance issues and he occasionally said “we really should start decluttering”.  It goes without saying that it was all a mad, crazy rush in the end.

It turns out that we had to build a whole new fence around our backyard for the pool, move our air-con for gas-compliance, put in a stair railing and a myriad of other odd-jobs that we hadn’t counted on. And anyone who has ever lived in the same house for more than 10 years, might have some idea of the junk we had accumulated – which resulted in not less that 2 dozen trips to Vinnies and the tip.

But, we got there, with the help of our wonderful parents and neighbours. We literally walked out of the house with the last bucket of cleaning stuff just in time to greet the real estate agent and meet our new tenants who were there to get the keys and move in.

If moving house wasn’t enough, throw in end of semester marking and reporting – 3 midnight nights of marking the week of the move and for nearly 2 weeks straight after. It has been a hectic few weeks!!! Lucky for us, mum and dad are very patient and were willing to have our excess junk consume their lounge and dining room – and have us stay – during these past few weeks.

We both finished work Friday and apart from having a break for some farewell drinks on Saturday and Sunday, it’s taken us until today to sort out the left-overs from the house and do those last minute jobs. And surprise, surprise we were still scrambling to pack everything in and away at midday today, when we had planned to leave at 10.00am. But thanks again to mum and dad, who shuffled us out of the house with the promise of cleaning up and sorting anything that was left, we were on our way!!!

Now we are a few hours north – en route to Elliott Heads – and it’s hard to believe that we won’t be coming back south in a few weeks time. Instead we will continue north and start exploring all that this great country has to offer. I think it will take a few weeks for us to unwind and the reality to sink in, but so, so happy to finally be on the road.

This year, we are taking 6 months off to explore Australia with the kids. The purpose of this blog is to share our adventures with family and friends. Hope you enjoy!!

The title of this post was initially – and probably still mainly is – in relation to our first trip in the new caravan. However, I think, in reality it is probably more aptly named for the fact that I am entering the ‘blogging’ world for the first time and about to embark on my first ever post.

So, wish me luck!!

It seems appropriate that I should start with a bit of background information on our camping history…

Drew and I started off in our early camping days with your standard 3 or 4 man tent (that comfortably fit 2 people). Probably a cheapie, but it did the job.

At some point in time, probably a year or 2 before we did our big trip, we discovered that we liked hiking. This was to cost a fortune over the coming years. We became addicted to camping shops and had to have the ‘top of the line’ everything. We bought the best backpacks, sleeping bags, Thermarest mattresses, polar fleeces, Gortex jackets, water bottles, camping stove and of course, our first ever hiking tent.

We progressed through a series of hiking tents over the period of the next 10 years or so. Our favourite being the one and a half man tent that we spent a year in while backpacking/hitch-hiking through Africa. It was so small we literally both had to sleep on our sides, and if one of us wanted to roll onto the other side, we both had to, at the same time. Our small vestibule barely fit our backpacks and our hiking boots. This doesn’t seem like such a big deal until you have to climb over the top of everything to get out in the middle of the night to go to the loo. Or more of a concern, having hyenas scratching under the vestibule, trying to get to the week’s supply of food you have stored in your backpack, not half a metre from your feet!! But that’s another story.

On our return to Australia, we seemed to do very little camping. until the kids came along. I’m guessing we probably pulled out the 10 year old cheapie for our first venture. But it wasn’t long before we upgraded to a 3-room Coleman Gold Series  tent, that we loved! Heaps of room for 2 adults, 2 porta-cots and  all the gear you need when travelling with a baby and a toddler. Oh…but the set up and pack up time!!

We mistakenly thought that upgrading to a camper trailer would save us time. Not to be. I think this was mainly due to the fact that we had more room, so took more junk. I’m sure that anyone who has ever camped with us would quite happily attest to this!!

After a few years, we progressed from the camper trailer to the Jayco Swan. At this stage we were going camping almost every month, including a week long stint at Yamba (which we still do) every Easter school holidays and a week long trip to Brunswick Heads every September school holidays. So, we felt that we could justify the upgrade.

We loved it!! It was super compact so we could store it at home under the carport. Yet, it had plenty of storage room, and once open and popped out was very spacious and open. And best of all, it still had lots of canvas and mesh so you still have that ‘camping feel’. This was what sold me in the end, because Drew had been trying to convince me for almost a year to move to a van.

This awesome van gave us nearly 3 years of joy. And this is probably where we would still be today had we not decided to do this 6 month trip around Oz later this year. There came calls from Drew, “I’m sick of still having half an hour of winding up awnings at the of each trip” and  “If we didn’t have pull out beds, we wouldn’t have to make them up every day”. From the kids, “Bunks would be so cool, so I don’t have to share a bed with my brother anymore”. And then from me, the only female, “It would be nice to have a loo, so I don’t have to go for a pee outside at night”.

Before too long, we found ourselves in this fancy-pansy, full size, glamorous van, with a kitchen way more modern than our own house, more lights, charges and outlets than you poke a stick at, an air-con, full-size fridge and even a washing machine!!

Now, this was supposed to be a blog about our first trip in the new van. I clearly have not got this blog thing anywhere near down pat. So now I guess I will just have to write another blog dedicated to the caravan. In the meantime, I have put a few picks here.

But let me tell you…we love it!!! Its hard to believe that we are the same Gabbie and Drew who lived out of a backpack for so many years!! We picked up this van in the wake of Cyclone Debbie, have had our first “very wet” camping trip ever, and were so appreciative of having a warm, comfortable, beautiful place to spend our down time. We are now officially, and unashamedly “glampers”, and…

We are very happy campers!!!